If I understand Aaron’s system correctly, the fact that BYU has won every game other than ours is what is causing us to be ranked #7 correct? By that I mean, it seems that as our previous opponents win more, our ranking goes up.
This from his About page, “The ranking system is retrodictive, which means that it represents each teams results as it compares to each of the other teams.”
Not sure why in the world they include the Darryl Marsee poll…most of his results are the extreme outliers for teams (either highest ranked or lowest ranked). Who knows, maybe this guy will look like a genius in the end, but right now it looks ridiculous (Penn state may not be great, possibly not top 25, or possibly not even top 50, but do you really think that they are only the 89th best team in the nation? Although he does have BYU at 109, so maybe he is onto something)
A lot of these are computer rankings based on algorithms. Many don’t settle until later in the season when there is enough data. I wouldn’t worry too much this early. Conference play will start creating better correlations. Non-conference play sets a foundation for comparison but is pretty loosely connected at first.
Nailed it. This is exactly why polls can never work in football. Human polls don’t work because they are based on emotion and bias. Computer polls don’t work because the sample size is simply too small, even at the end of the season.